Living Among Lions
by Elizabeth.Finch
Summary: [The city burned. There were no columns of smoke, no raging fires, not even a trace of ash in the air; the city burned nonetheless. Gotham had become her stake and she found herself standing, as she always knew she would, right in the center of the flame.]
1. The Meeting

**Disclaimer** – I do not own Batman or Nolan's DKR universe. I don't own Gotham or any of the cannon characters.

**Rated 'T'** for violence, adult situations, and language.

**_IMPORTANT A/N:_** I have posted and taken this fic down more than once… however, it won't leave me alone. I am determined to finish it. This is based loosely on the life of **Jehanne d'Arc** and for you history buffs, you'll find fun references to her life in this.

If you were a reader before and I lost you, sorry. If you're still with me, thank you for your patience.

If you're new, welcome to the crazy.

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><p><strong><em>Living Among Lions<em>**** by ElizabethFinch**

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><p><em>"And as the sky's falling down<em>_  
><em>_It crashed into this lonely town__  
><em>_And with that shadow upon the ground__  
><em>_I hear my people screaming out__  
><em>_I see fire."__  
><em>_"I See Fire"_ – Ed Sheeran

**Chapter One: The Meeting**

Jamie Delacroix was remarkably unremarkable.

She knew it and was grateful for it. It gave her the ability to go out into these streets with a red beanie on her head and a black oversized coat engulfing her small frame and be completely unbothered by anyone and everyone. Of course that didn't mean that she walked around freely at night like an idiot, no woman was dumb enough to do that since the Blackgate prisoners had been released. And those that were, well… they learned quickly.

But even as unbothered as she normally was by the general population of Gotham, there was still the mob that was coming her way that she should probably avoid.

They hadn't seen her yet, but that wouldn't last for long. There were eleven of them, armed and on the hunt, and immediately Jamie wanted to run. They were coming directly towards her and she wanted nothing more than to get as far away from them as she could. But running was the stupidest thing she could have done and so she forced herself to stay still.

It was no easy thing to do.

The instinct was pulsing through Jamie's body, every cell screaming at her to pick up her feet and _move_. But she didn't. Running never seemed to do anyone any good in Gotham anyway. It just drew attention to yourself and plastered a sign on your back that said _'Moving target, please kill me_'. And the mercenaries had been getting bored lately and had created a game that was frighteningly similar to something Jamie once played in an arcade. The game where you waited for a gopher to pop up out of one of five holes and when he did you took an oversized hammer and smashed his head as hard as you could.

Only, the mercenaries had guns instead of plushy hammers, and the gophers were Gotham's citizens.

And the blood. There was a lot of that.

Her heart was climbing higher and higher into her throat and there was a small tremor in her legs as she started to back herself into a cramped alley. Fear, something that she had eaten more than her share of in the last month, began to slither through her veins and choke her.

And then suddenly, like pressing play on a movie that had been paused for too long, the world exploded into noise.

At the echoing_ pop-pop-pop_ sound of a machine gun, Jamie instinctively fell to the ground and covered her head as she ducked behind some wooden crates praying that she was small enough to disappear completely. And then there was the terrible, terrible noise of a woman screaming down the road.

The sound was like a signal flare to the maniacs with the guns. There was raucous laughter and then the heavy pounding of feet on the pavement as they ran after their new target… which meant that they would run straight by Jamie. She kept her head down, her gaze glued to the ground and stayed absolutely still.

The woman screamed again, a shriek of terror that was drenched the sick realization that they were coming for her.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," Jamie chanted quietly and clapped her hands over her ears pressing as hard as she could. Her eyes squeezed shut and she clenched her teeth. "_Please_ just stop." She couldn't listen to this anymore.

She had seen enough.

The screams were the worst. There were different types of screams in Gotham and each one meant something different. The scary part was that Jamie was starting to recognize what the different sounds of them meant—and this was the kind of screaming that Jamie couldn't take.

From what she could hear, the men were in good spirits—a high most likely from the blood. These weren't the mercenaries that Bane brought in; the cold and silent killers. No, these were the uncontrolled, the recent escapees from Blackgate who swore an oath to the masked man. They had a vendetta against Gotham, all of Gotham and any bloodshed seemed to make them act a little crazier than the normal mercenary; like sharks in a feeding frenzy with the smell of a fresh kill in the water.

Jamie wasn't bleeding though. But she also wasn't moving or breathing. She waited; every muscle tensed like a bowstring as the men drew closer and closer and finally passed her by without even a glance down the alley she was holed up in.

The relief that flooded her was palpable and Jamie let out a small involuntary cry and fell back, hitting the ground hard. She immediately pressed her back against the icy wall and bit down on her knuckle to stop herself from making any more noise. They were gone. They were gone… but they could come back at any second. When they got bored with the woman, the woman who was screaming louder now—the crazed kind of shrieks that people weren't aware they could make until they jumped out of their throats.

Jamie sat there, raggedly trying to breathe and had no idea what she should do. She knew what the right choice would be, but these days the right choice was quickly becoming the wrong choice. Choices like this were getting people killed.

Abruptly a flash of white hot hate struck hard and fast in her veins. She hated this. She hated this _so much_. She hated that life had boiled down to embracing apathy. To keeping your head down and allowing people—innocent people, your neighbors even, to be hurt and killed and raped and so many horrible things just to keep yourself safe. It was sick and it was what Bane had turned Gotham into.

This wasn't a liberation or revolution. This was a prison in the guise of freedom; a perfect trap. Everyone gets to do what they want, get whatever they want, but they lose something invaluable in the gain.

A low beeping noise interrupted her internal tirade and Jamie was brought back to the world as she pulled back her sleeve and glanced down to her watch. She had fifteen minutes. Funny, how she forgot about things like plans and appointments now days. That never would have happened before the bomb. But the bomb put things into perspective.

However much perspective one can get when looking through a glass that was filled with mud and blood.

The watch beeped impatiently once more and Jamie sucked in a deep shuddering breath. She had to go, or else everything, absolutely everything that she had worked for would be useless. She had to get up and she had to get up _now_.

She did and it was easier than it should have been.

She brushed off the bottom of her jeans and groaned realizing that the freeze from the ground had soaked through her pants. A painful numbness came and it made her movements a little stiff. She bent down and tugged on her boots, pulling them higher on her calves. She didn't think about the fact that it was easier to get up and brush herself off because the woman's screams had died down. She didn't even want to think about what had most likely happened to make the screams stop. No, Jamie had somewhere to be, something to do.

And if this didn't work, well, she didn't quite know what she would do next. But she put her faith in the fact that something good was going to happen today—it had to. She was due for something good. _Gotham_ was due for something good.

She could feel it in her bones.

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><p>She had given herself eight minutes.<p>

Eight minutes to make sure the street was clear and to clear her head. Her steps were light and quick as she cut corners and continually glanced over her shoulder. Normally she would try to be more discreet, keep her head down and pace even, but the screams had unsettled her.

Most nights she and her little sister spent curled up beneath the windows serenaded by gunfire in the distance but something about the sound of human desperation wasn't as easy to shake off. Jamie quietly hoped that she would always be unsettled by the screams—that Gotham would never reach the point where screams became normal.

A part of her wanted to be angry for the rest of her life because of what had happened to her city, because of how people changed so suddenly and so drastically. But she wanted to do something more than be angry.

That was why she was standing in front of a boys home, in the cold, waiting to meet a man she had never met.

She didn't know as much as she would like about him but for being one of the only cops currently not trapped underground, Jamie thought that John Blake was pretty gutsy to be out on the streets so much. Maybe that was just a cop thing.

The fact that he visited St. Swithuns so regularly was something that she respected about him. A lot of people had forgotten about the orphanages over the last month. John Blake hadn't. He brought the boys at St. Swithuns food and made sure that they had heat and that their security was as strong as it could possibly get. He was a good guy, Jamie supposed. His actions said a lot more about him than most other citizens of Gotham at the moment.

But then again, maybe there were others, like her, waiting on the wings for their chance to fight back. In fact, as soon as the thought entered her mind she was sure that there were. There had to be. She wasn't alone.

She just hoped they had a better plan than she did at the moment because Jamie had no clue what she was doing, as usual. She was going into this blind and all she could do was hope that things would work out like they were supposed to. Sometimes they did and sometimes she screwed it up—but she was learning. She was learning that even when they got screwed up there was always another way.

She was learning that sometimes it was more about setting things into motion than seeing the direct result you hoped for.

Sometimes what you hoped for wasn't what you were meant to see.

Her watch sounded its five minute warning and Jamie switched off the alarm and stuffed her hand quickly back into her coat pocket. There were four more hours of daylight, five more minutes before John Blake would come walking around the corner. The nineteen year old fingered the square piece of paper she had tucked safely away and rocked onto the tip of her toes and then back on her heels as she waited. Nerves were trying to set in and she needed to stay calm.

Her mind automatically went through her list of things she was thankful for. She thought about her mother and her sister and the hole she found in her sock this morning and smiled because she_had _socks to wear. Perspective, Jamie smiled some more and wiggled her big toe feeling the hole. She felt lighter already.

There were figures, shadows really, moving in the windows of the building in front of her and Jamie watched them for a moment. She couldn't make out any real details on their appearance, but she caught the softest trail of laughter. She hadn't heard a child's laugh in a long time—too long. Who would have guessed that she would have to come to an orphanage during the occupation of a terrorist to hear such a sound?

Jamie added it to her slowly growing thankful list. She wondered if that was why the man she was about to meet came here so often as well: to hear a laugh. These days a laugh, even hushed, was power.

She found herself smiling—a slight curve of her lips—as John Blake came around the corner, right on time. He was handsome, with a lean build and dark cropped hair. But Jamie thought he still looked like a cop, even if he was in hiding. It was something in the way he held his body, the way he walked. It was a mask and people could see it if they looked closely enough. He might play relaxed, but he was strung tight, tense and ready to act.

She didn't blame him. His kind were being hunted down like dogs these days.

And now he was looking at her. His eyes stopped momentarily over her figure on the opposite side of the road from St. Swithuns as they swept his surroundings before they quickly moved on. His obvious judgment deemed her a non-threat. Jamie couldn't help but laugh a little to herself. She didn't mind being overlooked; it made life more fun to surprise people.

Speaking of which…

Jamie crossed her fingers and took a deep, deep breath, "And here we… _go_."

Glancing one way and then the other, she ran quickly across the road and almost slipped on some ice on the way. Catching her balance deftly, and so thankful that she hadn't fallen on her butt, she nodded to the man in front of her. He had stopped walking the moment she had moved and she could see his suspicion plain as day.

"Hey!" Her breath came out in white puffs. "John Blake, right?"

He took a step back, brows furrowed, as he carefully examined her. "Do I know you?"

"Not at all. But I know you," Jamie grinned a little and then deciding to be blunt about it, she dove right in. "I've seen you—on the streets. You're a cop, right? One of the last ones left. I think I might be able to help. You work with Commissioner Gordon and I have informa—"

She didn't even have time to scream before her back was slammed into a brick wall, and when she finally did try and scream the sound was muffled by his hand. Pain was shooting through the back of her head and Jamie felt it travel all the way down to her fingertips in little electrical sparks. She felt the ice cold tip of a gun just under her chin and she stared at the man in front of her, vision blurry, but eyes wide with shock. John Blake didn't seem to care though. He kept his hand over her mouth and the gun where it was as he spoke in a low and deadly voice. "I'm gonna let go and you're gonna have _five_ seconds to tell me who the hell you are."

Jamie nodded slowly, feeling the yarn of her beanie catch on a brick as she did so. Blake carefully removed his hand but didn't move the gun away. He stared at her hard and waiting. Naturally she slowly raised her hands in a show of surrender.

"I'm a friend. A friend of Commissioner Gordon," Jamie thought for a second and amended her statement. "Or I _could_ be a friend of the Commissioner."

"That still doesn't tell me who you are. And what do you know about Gordon or me for that matter?"

"Okay, off to a bad start. Sorry, but it's sort of hard for me to think with a gun on me." Blake's expression didn't change and the gun didn't move. Jamie sucked in a deep breath. "My name is Jamie Delacroix and I have lived in Gotham all my life," her voice was calm and slow, like she was speaking to a cornered animal. Which was a little ironic, she thought. "I know that you've been working with the Commissioner since Bane took over. I know that there are thousands of police trapped right under our feet and there are food drops to them regularly on the south side of Ackerman Park, just under the mercenaries' noses."

Maybe more information wasn't such a good idea because Blake's expression became like iron and she felt the barrel press deeper into her skin.

"Is this some kind of sick joke? Are you working for Bane or something?"

Jamie laughed out loud before she could stop herself. But she quickly recovered, horrified as she put a gloved hand over her own mouth. "Sorry, not funny. But do I honestly look like a mercenary?"

The detective just stared and she gave him her best winning smile. There was a beat of silence and whatever he saw caused him to slowly lower his gun. He didn't put his guard down, didn't smile or attempt to soften the anger clear on his face, didn't even put his gun away, but he did step back from her personal space and that was a relief in itself.

He waved a hand at her impatiently. "Explain how you know all this."

Here came the hard part, Jamie thought.

"I can't explain all of it right now... but I just do. Plus, it's amazing what you can find out if you simply watch things… For instance, I know that you and the Commissioner are planning something," Jamie paused here and made sure that she looked the man directly in his eyes. "I want in on it."

There was a scoff, as if he finally understood what this was all about. The officer tucked his gun away and looked at her no longer like he thought she could be a spy, but rather like she had grown three heads and he had to figure out why one of them was purple and it was annoying the heck out of him.

_Perfect._

Shaking his head like he couldn't believe he was actually hearing this, Blake turned away from her. "I don't have time for this."

"Time for what?"

"This—_you!_" He whipped around motioning towards her. It was the first time he raised his voice at her and it made Jamie flinch. He noticed. "I don't have time for crazy kids with hero-complexes and death wishes. You're just going to get yourself or others killed and I have actual things to do."

"Oh, and what, you think the only people who can save Gotham are cops?" Jamie was following after him, her voice rising too and Blake ignored her and continued walking. She got desperate. "What about the Batman?"

That stopped him.

Slowly, deliberately, he turned and looked at her. "What about him?"

Jamie rocked onto her toes, feeling something bright and hot course through her blood. "That's why he wore the mask in the first place. So that he could be any of us. He took the fall for someone eight years ago so that the people of Gotham would rise. But we haven't had the chance—until now. He did what he did so that a hero could be anyone. Even you, John Blake. It's the_people_. The people of Gotham have to fix this because we're the ones who helped Bane screw this entire place up. We collapsed in on ourselves and now this thing has to get fixed from the inside out, not from help out there—on the mainland. That help is not coming and time is ticking and I have to do something," she stopped and breathed for a second, her voice hardening. "_I am not_ going to die without doing something."

Blake still clearly didn't trust her, but he was listening. She could see it in his eyes. They were intense, like before, but listening. And now that she had finally started saying what she meant to all along, she couldn't stop.

"A month ago I watched a six year old boy die right in front of me. He was killed by a ricochet bullet from a trigger-happy mercenary. He bled out on the street and no one even bothered to stop and help. They were all too busy trying to save themselves, or too scared to take the chance. I was scared, too and I ran and I will be ashamed of running for the rest of my life. And this has just been one month, _one stupid month_. I sat in an alley on my way here—to meet you—and listened to a woman scream for help because she was about to get raped and who knows what else. I couldn't do anything at all but sit and listen to her scream because if I tried, it would have meant I would die too." Jamie was baring her teeth by the end, anger pumping through her blood. "I can't just sit back and do nothing while my city rots."

Blake looked down to the ground and gave a defeated sigh. When he spoke, he at least had the decency to sound a little shamed. "Listen kid, I know where you're coming from, I really do, but—"

"—but your answer is still no."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, the liability is too much. We have too much at stake here."

Jamie nodded and pursed her lips. "I get it. It was a long shot, but I had to try something," and maybe, since she couldn't convince him with her words—not that she really thought she stood a chance of doing anyway—it was time to set things into motion.

He was a cop after all, he needed evidence.

Jamie dug in her jean pocket, pulling out a piece of paper that had been folded too many times and handed it to Blake. "Here, take this. You could probably use it more than me."

He looked down at the paper. "What is it?"

"A map," Jamie took it from him and began unfolding it revealing a neatly drawn outline of streets, buildings, and landmarks. There was a column to the right that had dates, times, and street names. Blake looked at it closely and she hoped he wouldn't pay too much attention to her horrific attempt at drawing a truck. Maps, she could do. Vehicles, not so much. Her gloved finger pointed to Fifth Street. "It's a map of the route the trucks carrying the bomb take. There are three trucks and I think they transfer the bomb to a different one every day. See the three different colors? Red for Truck Number One, Blue for Truck Number Two, Green for Truck Number Three. The routes they take don't really change. The trucks are identical, but it's the same three drivers—so that might help in figuring out which one has the bomb. The trucks also have lead lined roofs which is probably why none of our surveillance friends flying around up there can get a lead on which one might be carrying it. And of course there is a tank guarding each."

She finished and he continued to look at the map, studying the places and hopefully not the truck drawing. She waited a few seconds longer before he finally pulled himself away to give her what was becoming a very familiar look.

"You're insane, you know that?"

"Maybe," Jamie shrugged. "Maybe not. Just take a look at the map. It has times and dates of which trucks are where and when. Check it out yourself if you don't trust me. But the information is right. Consider it a gift."

She started backing away, walking backwards with her hands in her coat pockets. Jamie knew better than to stalk the poor man until he led her to Gordon, no matter how tempting that was. And maybe giving him some time to think would be good, because right now he just stared obviously not sure what to say. She smiled at him, big and true. Maybe a little too big, though. But he grinned for the first time and shook his head at her.

"If you change your mind about letting me help, I'll be here three days from now and every three days after that. Same time."

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><p>This was her favorite time of day, when the sun would set.<p>

It wasn't so much the colors in the sky as it was the light streaming through the tall skyscrapers. Sometimes it seemed that the last rays of light from the day were the strongest. They were beauty and they pierced through the city not caring how imposing and dark the shadows were. It made Jamie smile to see that the light hadn't changed since the arrival of the bomb. It still pierced through everything—even her.

But then the sun would always eventually set, too, and night would rule for a time. The buildings would change as the light went out and if Jamie looked straight up she could almost see a giant mouth over her head; the night sky like an abyss and the skyscrapers like long jagged teeth. She wondered if one day the mouth would shut and swallow them all whole.

She wondered if that day were coming soon.

It wasn't the bomb she thought about exactly. To Jamie, Gotham itself had become the bomb. The city was deteriorating and it was only a matter of time before it exploded. She didn't know what or who the trigger would be, but she could feel that it was coming soon.

With her hands stuffed in her pockets to keep them warm, Jamie turned down the last street heading towards her home. Her steps felt weighed down and heavy. As she walked through Gotham, the city that held all of the memories of her life, there was a sorrow that stuck itself right in the center of her stomach and _ached_. It ached with grief and pain and desperation all at once. And there was shame, too. Shame that felt more like a grave and every day she was being buried a little deeper. Every time she walked by someone getting mugged, every time she stayed where she was as someone screamed for help, the dirt piled a little higher.

She was going to be held accountable one day and she didn't know how she would answer not for the things that she had done—but for what she hadn't done.

_Well_, Jamie quietly told herself, _you're doing something now_. And she was. She just hoped it wasn't too late.

Something told her though that this was the right time and she was doing the right thing. Even if today didn't go exactly as she had hoped, she acted, she moved, she wasn't a victim for one single breathless moment. That moment lit a hope, just a small spark, inside Jamie that had been beaten down lately.

It was Bane who had made this more than just a war for the city; he made this a war for the soul of Gotham. And so this battle wasn't just against Bane, it was against Gotham itself. Jamie would see to it that people understood that.

She would start with John Blake.

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><p>The bomb was going to kill them all and Adenrele didn't know what to think of that.<p>

Even though as a young girl, she knew what she was getting into when she joined Bane. He spoke plainly about what he required of those who served in the revolution and what would happen if they showed any sign of disloyalty. Bane also knew what he was getting into when he brought her in, because when he first met her she had been sixteen years old and covered in blood. A knife had been in her right hand and there was no trace of fear on her face.

There should have been.

Maybe that was why he took her in? He saw what should have been but was never going to be. She should have been afraid, paralyzed by fear. But she was hard instead; unrelenting steel, not just unbendable but _unbreakable_.

These days though, Adenrele felt old and worn. Like a good leather shoe that lost all of its comfort and now just brought an aching. And the older she became the more she realized that there were many things she ached for and death was not one of them.

She had been running from death her whole life. She did not want to embrace it now.

Barsad had been the one to find her in West Africa, all raw and nerves and ready to kill anyone who tried to touch her—including him. He eventually brought her to Bane and she almost wished they would have left her in Africa. Almost. But if they hadn't taken her in she would have been stoned most likely. Or cut into pieces. She honestly isn't sure which one. Maybe both. After all, most child brides in Sierra Leone didn't get away with murdering their would-be husbands on their wedding night.

But she had. She had dug a curved knife right into his chest five times in a cold rage and she got away with it.

Because of Bane. And for that, she owed him her life... but maybe not her death.

"Adenrele," the voice was quiet and she didn't need to turn around to know who it was. She had known him since the start of her new life and she always knew he was there before he called her name. But she turned around anyway, to be kind. Her dark, dark eyes met his and Barsad continued. "It's time."

She nodded. She had been ready twenty minutes early—as usual. Standing up and slinging a gun around her back, she glanced quickly at the man in front of her. "You're tired."

Barsad's face never changed. "The doctor was being disruptive at the Courthouse. And someone is supplying the police with food. They're still alive in the tunnels, Isaac could hear them today. They should not have lived this long."

"I shouldn't have either."

The words were out before she knew it. Adenrele allowed herself one moment of regret for dwelling on the past before she busied herself with making sure that her boots were laced tight and that the knife she kept by her right ankle was in a stable place. All was well, but she checked twice anyway. Barsad was silent. She didn't want to ask him if he remembered what it was like the night that he found her. That was in the past and would stay buried there.

Adenrele shrugged on her military style jacket and re-secured her gun. Barsad watched her the entire time. She was used to him and his quiet observance of life. It didn't bother her much; his stare was easier to handle than Bane's.

She started moving towards the door when Barsad stopped her. "Don't take the patrol south of Shoreline Boulevard. You are on the north now with Thiago."

She wanted to ask why she shouldn't take the south patrol when that was what she had been scheduled for, but if Barsad was giving the order, it was to be obeyed without question. He wasn't Bane's lieutenant for nothing.

Nodding in acceptance, she moved past him and quickly made her way down the curving staircase of City Hall to the base level. Thiago was waiting for her, and he offered her a genuine smile tilting his head towards the empty street waiting for them. She followed his lead and glanced back over her shoulder to see what she knew was already there. Barsad's gaze was constant. She wondered briefly what he would do one day if she decided to wave at him. His reaction alone might be worth giving it a try.

Her full lips curved up just enough to be a miniscule smile and she turned and left. She didn't want to try Thiago's patience. He was a good man, a crazy Brazilian who on occasion let his mouth get away with him, but a good man nonetheless. Adenrele had shot him once—just in the foot, but that was only because she was really angry and he deserved it. From then on they seemed to have a mutual understanding.

Their boots echoed on the stairs as they left the building and she took a deep breath allowing the cold air to brutally fill her lungs. Eying the street to her right, she took note of the massive figure standing off to the side of City Hall, his hands on the collar of his jacket and his gaze transfixed on the night sky. He did that sometimes. Adenrele wondered what it was he saw. There were no stars, only blackness; the city was too dense for there to be much beauty up there. She preferred the coastal skies of her home, with the breeze from the ocean dancing at her fingertips and the billion star hotel directly above her.

This city was not Africa. But Bane seemed mesmerized by something she did not see, maybe something none of them saw. Only him. Or maybe he was searching.

For a reason that she couldn't explain, it made her sad.

She hoped he would find what it was he searched for up there. She might have held some resentment against him over the last few months because of her own survival instincts, but while many people did not see beyond the mask, Adenrele knew from the time she was sixteen years old that there was a certain kindness to Bane. Not the kind that is written about in books or easily found, but the sort of kindness you search for and discover after years of knowing a person. Maybe half of it is conjured in the mind because you simply want it to be there, but Adenrele saw it still.

And she wished now, more than ever, that he would find what he searched for. Maybe then he would stop this madness and she could live out her days. Or at least live until a bullet in a proper fight took her.

Turning away from him and her thoughts, she began to walk.

"Why are you going on the north route when you were instructed to take the south?"

There was no mistaking the lilting curiosity in that voice or who it belonged to. Both mercenaries stopped immediately and looked to Bane in question. His gaze slowly drew away from the night sky to the pair and the mask rasped as he spoke again. "Take the south patrol."

There was a beat of silence before Thiago came to his senses and answered for both of them, "Yes, sir."

The mask rasped again and then there was nothing. Nothing but what Adenrele felt slowly crawl up her back and neck, tingly and reminding her all too much of the legs of a spider. Something was wrong. She didn't know what, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. But if he wanted them to go south, then south it was. She trusted him.

Bane's heavy gaze stayed on them until they were out of sight.


	2. The Desperate Measure

**_Living Among Lions_**** by ElizabethFinch**

* * *

><p><em>"The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that."<em>_  
><em>- Richelle Mead

**Chapter Two: The Desperate Measure**

Two hours into their patrol, Adenrele realized that something was very wrong.

Shouldering her gun, she heard Thiago do the same about ten feet behind her. There wasn't anything in particular that put them on edge, no suspicious noises or shadows, just instinct. They cleared alleys and corners for two blocks but saw nothing. That didn't make her feel any better.

It was part of the reason why she hated the night patrols. She couldn't see anything in the distance; she didn't know what danger was ahead. She might be able to make out shadows and the basic shapes of people, but not the expression on their face or the clear intent in their body language.

This was the hour of deceit.

Adenrele walked on the balls of her feet. Toe first, then heel, every move careful and controlled. It was something her father had taught her when they had gone hunting together and it was only natural to fall into now. Suddenly, she paused and Thiago slowly came up beside her. They both were still, gun at the ready and eyes straining to see in the darkness.

"What is it?" Her partner breathed and Adenrele put a finger to her lips and nodded to the alley just ahead of them.

It was more of a crevice than an actual alley, just enough space for one body. They crept forward. She could hear someone shifting just ahead of them and then—_BOOM!_ Adenrele was the first to begin shooting; a quick succession of bullets spewed from the barrel of her assault rifle. A tin trashcan that had suddenly fallen over seemed to take most of the hits. It jerked from the impact of the bullets and rolled its way into the street littering garbage the whole way.

Adenrele stopped, confused. A second later there was a loud screeching yowl and it made her jump. Curses flew out of her mouth as a skinny orange cat skittered out and ran off into the night giving her an angry hiss. Thiago, however, was laughing his head off. Adenrele cursed again.

"_Assassino de gatos!_" He cackled and she glared at him as best as she could. "You're a cat killer! Wait until they hear about this one."

He held his gun with one hand so that he could wipe away a tear with the other. Adenrele snarled at him. "You are going to keep your mouth shut. Do you understand?" When Thiago kept laughing, she reinforced her command in Portuguese. "_Você entendeu?_"

Thiago, still shaking with laughter, finally raised his hands in mock surrender but continued giving her a toothy grin. "Whatever you say, boss."

If Adenrele had been ten years younger, she might have rolled her eyes at the older man. But now she just felt tired. Stupid creature. "And the animal is still alive. I am _not_ a cat killer," she insisted in a low mutter as she began walking again.

"So that means you're just a bad shot?"

"We can test that theory if you wish. I am sure my aim is good enough to blow off your other foot."

Despite her threat, she could feel Thiago's amusement and she knew he was a few seconds away from laughing at her again. She clenched her jaw and studiously ignored him as he went back to muttering to himself in Portuguese. From what basic phrases she understood, he was talking about her and the cat and probably would continue to do so for the rest of the night… unless she did something. With a quirk to her lips, she whipped around and fired a single warning shot at him. The bullet ricocheted and smoke rose from the ground directly next to Thiago's right foot. He had simply stood there as she shot at him, mouth open and no small measure of shock on his face. Adenrele for the first time that night broke into a full blown grin and Thiago quickly went from surprise to rage.

"What the f—"

"—_HELP! PLEASE DON'T—!_"

The scream ended abruptly and Adenrele had her gun up in a second, the previous moment forgotten the instant the sound rang out through the night. Thiago followed her, his movements more jerky than hers.

The commotion came from the end of the road towards Shoreline Boulevard, near the bay. Without a word to the other, they began carefully walking that way.

Adenrele got the same feeling she had before they began their patrol. Like spiders crawling up and down her back, her neck, her scalp—thousands of them.

There was a reason why Bane wanted her on the south patrol and she had a feeling she was about to find out why.

When they got closer the sounds of a commotion up ahead became more distinct. There were no more screams, but someone was hit (pistol whipped was Adenrele's guess) and then there was a grunt ending with a drawn out groan. Someone was cursing and spitting. Adenrele grit her teeth and prepared herself. If her suspicions were right, it seemed she would have her third run-in with the recently freed Blackgate prisoners. She had long ago made her opinion of their character very clear. She might be a killer, but they were worse. They were so much worse and they enjoyed it.

Maybe she'd enjoy killing them.

There was a dim street light burning ahead and the light showed six figures, five were standing and one was on his knees. Adenrele recognized them instantly. They all belonged to Bane—like her. All of them except the boy kneeling on the ground.

He looked no older than sixteen.

It was obvious he had been the one who had been hit from the blood pouring out of a hole in his cheek. She grimaced at the sight; his teeth must have cut straight through the flesh. He was crying softly. The mercenary standing in front of the boy turned slowly, as if he had heard Adenrele and Thiago's approach even though they made no noise.

It was Barsad.

He showed no expression at their arrival, but she watched his jaw clench, just once. The blood splatter on his hand was redder as the scarf around his neck and Adenrele felt her eyes drawn to it.

Barsad had not wanted her here and Bane had, she thought again.

Now she knew why.

She tore her eyes away and quickly glanced at the other mercenaries, a few nodded at her while others were still and silent. Next to her, Thiago spit out one word. "_Traitor._"

For one small, terrifying moment, Adenrele wondered who Thiago was talking about.

"Come," her partner said suddenly and finally. He kept his eyes on the scene in front of them. "Barsad has this handled."

Thiago was waiting for her, but she wasn't able to move her feet quite yet. The eyes of the boy were on her from where he kneeled and it felt like fire (_save me, save me, save me_)_._ She didn't have to guess at what he had done to deserve an execution like this, in the secrecy of the night. He was not the first and Adenrele knew that he would not be the last. With Bane, they lived in a sort of paradox where having the desire to live would only guarantee your death.

And tonight, Bane's message was clear—like a glass sea.

Adenrele's survival instincts had been kicking into overdrive and Bane must have caught on. Cowardice was not tolerated and desertion equaled treachery to Bane.

She didn't know what made her more angry, that Bane thought her a coward or that Barsad was about to kill a child.

"Adenrele, he has this handled," Thiago said again but she hardly heard it. The fire from the boy was burning her again and she felt like she was being branded.

He was so young.

The excitement of the revolution must have faded for him and turned into a very real nightmare. She understood. He must have tried to make a run for it. She understood that too, even if she never acted upon it.

_But he is young_, she thought again. Adenrele knew the rules, but she hated it when they called for the death of children. It felt _wrong_ in every way and it set her stomach to rot.

She could feel Barsad's eyes on her and it made her skin itch terribly. "He has this handled," she repeated slowly. Adenrele pinned him with her gaze. She needed to know. "You have this handled, Barsad?"

It wasn't really a question, but she wanted an answer.

"Yes."

He stared at her for a long time and his gaze wasn't hard or angry or hateful. It never was. She thought that most days it was sad. But none of that was what she saw now. What she saw was all of the ugly things that Barsad has done his whole life. And she saw herself swirling round and round like stars freewheeling too fast overhead. So many years, so many times they had almost died.

She _knew_ him.

He was the one who found her. He didn't hurt her after she tried to kill him—twice. He was the one who helped her scrub the blood off of her hands that first night and gave her permission to cry—even though the tears never fell.

His hands were the ones soaked now and she wasn't sure she could clean this blood off.

Adenrele thought again, painfully bright, that Barsad had not wanted her to see this.

"Come on," Thiago nudged her with his shoulder. He was annoyed, whether at the delay or still about her shooting at him, she didn't care now. "Let him deal with the traitor, we have to keep moving anyway. We have a long night ahead."

Yes, they did.

_Don't take the patrol south of Shoreline Boulevard._ Barsad's words echoed in her mind and it was becoming a mantra for her. Even if Bane had wanted to send her a message, Barsad had not wanted her to see this, he did not want her to see this, he did not want her to see this. So much so that he went against orders so that she wouldn't. He took a risk and she would honor that. The boy's eyes might be fire but there was nothing that could be done. His fate was sealed.

Adenrele walked away, further into the darkness. And when a single gunshot—that horrible sound that was so final and so sudden because it was just once and then _nothing_—echoed from behind them, she adjusted her gun and kept moving.

Barsad had this handled.

* * *

><p>He must have lost his mind.<p>

That was the only explanation John Blake could come up with for what he was about to do. There was no logic in it, no way to be positive that this wasn't going to be magnificently screwed up in the end. He was just going with his gut. Actually, if he thought about it, this was the kind of thing that he normally did. The kind of thing that usually got him heat from his superiors. Only the last time he could back it up with hard evidence: blueprints of the sewers, records on Dagget's construction company _and_ in the end it got him promoted to detective.

Blake looked down at the hand drawn color-coded map and folded it back up before placing it in his pocket. He laughed but it was more of a quick exhale of breath than an actual laugh. Desperate times called for desperate measures, he guessed.

Turning from Fifth Street where he had been watching the trucks roll by this morning, Blake headed East towards Francisco's grocery. He had spent the last three days checking out every detail of Jamie's information, trying to find a loophole. And he did find one—a big one—just not with her information. So far she had been disturbingly right about the trucks, the streets, the timing, everything. It all matched up.

Well, all of it except for her. Jamie was the loophole.

She had conviction in spades, sure, she knew about the cops and where they were in the tunnels and where they were getting the food drops. That was what bothered him the most. She knew too much.

Blake didn't think she was one of Bane's. She wasn't lying when she told him why she wanted to help, but there were too many unanswered questions (like how in the _hell_ did a kid like her get this kind of intel?) and it was starting to give him a migraine.

About a half a mile away from Francisco's, the detective mentally shoved her away for the time being and began going over every other piece of information he had to share. It wasn't much, to be honest, aside from the paper burning like acid in his pocket. There was another one of the St. Swithun's boys that had been found dead a few nights ago and he hadn't been washed up in the sewers. He had been shot, execution style: a single a bullet to the head. It looked like his face had taken a pretty good beating before his death, too.

His name was Max and he was fifteen years old. Blake remembered him. He liked basketball and watching _Spongebob Squarepants_. His favorite food was pizza with sausage and green olives.

Now he was dead.

Blake knew it was about time that he got Father Reilly to give him all the records of the boys who had aged out, he needed to know how many were possibly working for Bane. That was a visit Blake was not looking forward to making, but it had to be done. He was tired of seeing these boys wind up dead for a cause they didn't fully understand.

Hunching his shoulders against the wind, Blake grit his teeth against the bite of it. It was steadily getting colder and that wasn't good for Gotham. Plus, he hated the cold. There was nothing welcoming about it.

Taking a right turn, Blake checked the street and saw Francisco's kid, Charlie, waiting like usual outside the store. The bottom half of his green apron peaked out under his coat. When he saw Blake's approach, he looked down the street both ways and waved him over. Blake kept his walk the same, nonchalant.

Francisco's was a mom and pop kind of place, a hole in the wall store with a big freezer in back that was perfect for their meetings. Blake used to come here before Bane, they always had a good choice in different cuts of meat and he liked supporting local businesses rather than the huge chains.

"Hey John." Charlie looked ready to burst. His eagerness reminded Blake a little of Jamie. It was whole-hearted and completely reckless.

"Charlie." Blake nodded and stopped to shake the younger man's hand. "The Commissioner here?"

"Yeah," Charlie said enthusiastically and grinned jerking his head back to the building behind him. "He got in about five minutes ago with everyone else."

"Good. Are you staying out here?"

"Yeah, gonna keep an eye out."

Blake clapped him on the shoulder and went inside. Charlie's parents were behind the counter, looking anxiously out the window and Blake offered them a small smile as he made his way toward the back. They would have to find a way, somehow, to repay them. These people took a serious risk opening up their store for what was left of the city's cops to use as a base. It was a safe spot for all of them to travel to, far enough away from City Hall and any major cells of mercenaries. And now Blake knew that it was also a good distance from the routes the trucks took.

Heading straight for the back, Blake pushed through the double doors. Charlie was right, everyone was there. Which was pretty sad because there were only fifteen of them.

A lot of these guys were veteran cops; the ones who had survived the Joker's reign of terror, who hadn't been bought out in the height of the mob. Two of these men had retired at least three years ago, but the occupation of a masked terrorist had forced them back into service.

They were gathered in a loose circle—waiting for him, most likely. The Commissioner, who had been in the middle of a conversation, eyed him over the top of his glasses, his forehead in a deep wrinkle, "Good of you to show up, rookie."

"What'd I miss?"

They spent the next hour going over different reports from all over the city. Most of them were the same: a woman was attacked in the Narrows, a man was beaten and left for dead, from what they could tell Bane's revolution only seemed to be growing in strength and numbers. Regular citizens of Gotham were giving their loyalty by the day to get their hands on any gun that they could. That meant that there were more untrained and armed people on the street, thus more blood and more "accidents". It was a nightmare. And then there was the issue of the city being on the edge of winter and the increasingly longer power outages and what to do about getting heat to Gotham if the power went out for good. Blake sardonically thought that if things didn't turn around soon they wouldn't have to worry too much; the bomb would provide more than enough heat for everyone.

Enough heat to burn them all alive.

Gordon seemed particularly frustrated today and Blake felt very much the same. It was hard, meeting in total secrecy and having more and more problems reported every week with little to no solutions. It was a horrible feeling, helplessness. The city was slowly falling into a deep, dark pit and John Blake didn't know if they were going to be able to climb out of it. At least not without a miracle.

The meeting drew to a grueling end and Blake glanced at the time. He had a few hours to convince the Commissioner before he had to meet Jamie. It shouldn't be too hard, as long as he downplayed the origin of the map itself.

Different men were starting to trickle out, one by one and with enough time between their exits so that suspicions wouldn't be raised. John Blake waited for a moment alone with the Commissioner. This would be for Gordon's eyes only until they could get a more definite feel on it.

The moment came when the last man, Robertson, left after a gripping handshake with the Commissioner and a nod to Blake. As soon as he was gone, Gordon deflated with a deep and heavy sigh. He pulled off his glasses to rub his tired eyes.

Now or never.

"Commissioner." Blake began carefully. "I think you better take a look at this."

Gordon looked at him, expectant and then down to his hands. He stared at the paper for one moment before he took it, still folded, just as it had been handed to Blake in the first place. The police Commissioner shot the young detective a brief curious glance before replacing his glasses and starting the unfolding process.

Blake watched the expressions on the older man's face as he took in all the details, his eyes raking over the information again and again. One hand came up to his mouth, his index finger resting over his thick mustache. Seconds ticked by until finally Gordon spoke, flabbergasted.

"How did you—"

"I've spent the last two days checking it out myself," Blake cut him off, not quite ready to answer that question yet. "Everything on there is correct. And I think we were right, about the trucks. They probably have lead lined roofs—"

"—keeping the mainland surveillance from getting a read." Gordon finished this time and Blake was right with him.

"Exactly. With this, we can start tracking the trucks, and then maybe the bomb. We might stand a better chance of getting a scan on it from the ground level."

"This is good, this is _very_ good," Gordon was grinning suddenly and there was something new in his voice, a vicious excitement.

Blake thought it sounded like revenge.

The Commissioner went back to looking at the map and then his brows furrowed and confusion washed over him. He pointed, tapping his finger on one single spot. "What is that, son?"

Blake moved over and Gordon showed him what he was talking about.

"I think it's a truck, sir."

Gordon looked at him seriously, then back to the drawing. Blake had to admit that it was a ridiculous truck. It was more like a deranged box with a grumpy stick figure sitting on it than an armored vehicle driven by mercenaries. Gordon must have thought the same. "If that's a truck, stick to being a detective. You won't get very far in the arts."

Hesitating, Blake tried to figure out how to proceed. "Well, you see, sir, it's not mine. The map. I didn't draw it."

"Who did?"

"A kid—a girl," the young detective corrected himself and he could see the wheels not just turning in the Commissioners head, _oh no_, they were spinning out of control. "Her name is Jamie, I can't remember her last name but I'm pretty sure it's something French. She met me outside of St. Swithuns three days ago."

"And this 'kid'… how old is she?"

"My guess would be about sixteen, maybe seventeen."

"Where did she come from? Who is she? How did she get this?" Gordon fired off question after question and Blake felt like an idiot because he had no idea. He had been so shell shocked that first day that he hadn't thought to get any more information on her and now the questions were plaguing him.

"I honestly don't know."

"Can she be trusted?" Gordon's voice went quiet and Blake thought about it. He thought about what she said about the Batman, the fear in her eyes when he had the gun on her and the hatred in her voice when she talked about what had happened to Gotham. He tried to find one piece of hard evidence that could prove that yes, she could be trusted. But all he had was his gut and his own investigating of her information. He knew nothing about her.

Gordon watched the hesitation and then he suddenly hit Blake in the chest with the map. "Find out, rookie."

* * *

><p>Today was the day and Jamie was trying not to panic.<p>

Today she would go to St. Swithuns and if John Blake wasn't there, she would go again in another three days. But he would be there, she knew it. Or else he decided, as many had before him, that she was crazy and not worth his time.

Still, a nagging thought in her mind told her that there was _no way_ that she would have been told all of this: the information about the trucks, the food drops, the cops, everything for it to just go to waste. There had to be a reason... she just didn't know exactly what that reason was. But shoving aside her Source of information (the Source that was also the cause of a lot of headaches), Jamie also refused to believe that a cop would take something that had even the slightest possibility of being evidence and do nothing with it. His type was too suspicious for that.

In the meantime, something had jarred her out of sleep bright and early this morning and told her she needed to have more information ready for when Officer Blake decided to make his appearance. She needed to keep the interest, somehow. But she had no leads, no ideas, no revelations, nothing.

And so Jamie did the only thing she could think of: she integrated herself into The People's Court of Gotham.

It might have been the most insane thing she had ever done, or the most insanely _brilliant_. She wasn't sure which one it was going to be yet. But she had been coming in for the past few days, quiet as a mouse, slipping in with the other citizens of Gotham.

Getting in was easier than she thought it would be, staying there, however, was not.

With the never ending shouts twisting their way around the room bending everything into a bitter, bitter circle, to the cries of the condemned, Jamie spent most of her time trying to drown it all out and concentrate on what she was there to do.

It didn't help that she was seeing the person who was responsible for so many of her friends' childhood nightmares, including a few of her own, for the first time in person. And Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, seemed even more unhinged now than he had all those years ago when he ran wild with that famous burlap sack on his head as he destroyed the Narrows. The old jacket he wore with feathers and hay and ripped seams did not help either. He sat atop an enormous pile of books and banged the gavel he had been given multiple times a day.

Sometimes Jamie thought he banged it just for fun.

Pieces of paper would float down as he scribbled notes and tossed away files and the lives of people in a grand fashion. After two days of watching him, she understood why Bane had chosen him of all people: he put on a good show.

The trials themselves—or really as Crane repeatedly corrected everyone, the _sentencing hearings_—numbered so many that she could hardly keep track of all of those who had been put to death or exiled. The doctor was making quick work of Gotham and the people loved him for it. They embraced madness, they embraced their own death, Jamie thought. They welcomed it and asked for more. Always more.

On her first day there she had to force herself to stay even as her stomach started to churn. She wrote down whatever information she could in shaky handwriting on the pages of the tiny notebook she carried. There had been one ridiculous moment, in the beginning, where she felt like Steve from that show, _Blue's Clues_. Only this involved death and exile and the quick fall of Gotham's morality instead of a quirky blue dog and a singing mailbox.

But that moment came and went the more that blood was shed. She tried to yell with them when the people got particularly rowdy, though she found that she could never really raise her voice to their height. She tried her best to blend in all the while secretly jotting down whatever information she thought might be valuable. She counted how many mercenaries were there every day and how armed they were, exits and possible entries, noted the door that Crane seemed to enter from and exit to every day. She tried to see if there were any weak spots, anything they could use. She even attempted to find out if Bane followed a schedule for the days he would sit in on the sessions. But he didn't, as far as she could tell, because he hadn't made one single appearance.

Thank _God_.

Most of this felt like useless information, just random facts, but she wrote it down categorizing it into each day she had been a witness in the court. She was stabbing in the dark and she knew it, but it was better than doing nothing.

Doing something, even something crazy, was always better than doing nothing, she thought.

"Sherman Fine, realtor and… _broker_. You have been charged with multiple counts of fraud, greed, and oh, accessory to murder. How do you plea?" Crane's voice cut through her thoughts and Jamie was suddenly shoved hard against the railing. The crowd had lurched forward, moving in an abrupt wave almost like they were one massive body; one single, deadly predator. Gripping the banister, Jamie pushed back to give herself some more room.

The shouting grew to a painful volume as a new victim was brought to the forefront of the court. He was different than the others. He wasn't begging for mercy. The man was utterly calm in an expensive looking suit, black with a cobalt blue silk tie. And he looked straight at Dr. Crane without blinking.

"Not guilty, and you know that, _Scarecrow_."

The man's voice was biting and Jamie found herself for the first time since she came to court interested in how this was going to play out.

"You played the system and now the system is simply returning the favor," Crane told him with a smile and there was something meaningful behind it. "Death or exile; what will it be?"

The crowd began shouting their own opinion which always seemed to be the same no matter who was in the chair: death. They always wanted death. They thrust their way forward and Jamie had to keep her hands planted firmly on the banister and her arms rigidly straight just so that she wouldn't be crushed beneath the weight of their fury. She thought again that this was different than the others. This was like lighting crackling in the room.

These people wanted this man dead, more dead than any of the others, and if they didn't get what they wanted…

"That was just business, Scarecrow. I worked for you. I gave you places to hide, without me you would have never lasted as long as you did in Gotham. You _need_ me."

"Oh, my friend," the doctor said with false sincerity. "This is not _me_ bringing you into court today. This is the people of Gotham. And someone must have not been too pleased with your services. You see, they are the jury," he adjusted his glasses and Jamie noticed that they were now lopsided. "I merely keep the disorder. And it looks as though they have found you…"

Crane paused for effect and the mob loved it as they began screaming again. Their voices were so contorted that not one word was even distinguishable, just the pure molten hot hate. Crane looked immensely pleased. "Guilty. So, should I ask one more time? Death or exile?"

The man tensed, every line in his body rigid as he was filled with rage. Finally, he stood and Crane's eyes seemed to light up like a child on Christmas morning. Something was about to happen, Jamie realized, and she was trapped between the banister and the throbbing madness at her back.

"I'll take death," Sherman snarled and then reached into his suit, "just not mine."

It didn't take long for the crowd to react when Sherman Fine pulled out the gun and shot the two mercenaries closest to him. It was instantaneous chaos, screaming and running, the citizens of Gotham trampling over each other as they tried to flee. The doors were too narrow for the masses to exit. They panicked even more as they grew congested; trying to escape what they had thought was their place of ultimate justice. And when more shots were fired, it only became worse.

Jamie had run, too, at first. But once she realized no one was getting through the doors, she crouched down next to a pillar and covered her head. More shots fired and there were angry shouts and then something happened. In a terrifying and all too familiar clarity, the sound of chaos around her died down to a buzzing white noise until there was nothing but movement.

"Oh no," Jamie felt the soft vibration of her own voice, even if she couldn't hear herself. People ran by her, shoving one another, their mouths opened and veins in their necks popped out, but there was no noise. She felt it then, that unmistakable presence of something distinctly _other. _"No, no, no, not now," she grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. "Please do not happen. _ Not now_."

**_Look_****.**

Jolted, Jamie actually shook when she heard the Voice resonate deep within her echoing off of her rib cage and bouncing around inside of her. Grimacing, knowing full well now what happened when she didn't do what she was told, she took her hands away from her head and forced her eyes open so she could watch the chaos. The mob was still thrashing around desperate to get out and the mercenaries that were left in the courthouse were closing in on Sherman Fine as he made a run straight for the door that Crane normally used.

Crane was nowhere to be seen. He had vanished.

In the rush, the men (some of them Bane's) were disorganized and disoriented. This had been unexpected, after all. And maybe that was why Sherman Fine was able to slip out of their reach and away from their bullets. There was a room or multiple rooms in the back of the building, to the left the giant desk. She had already known that, but when Sherman Fine ran in there and turned shooting at anyone who attempted to follow, Jamie learned something new. There must have been a way out, an escape, through those doors because once the mercenaries were finally able to follow, they returned moments later empty handed.

He got away. Jamie blinked and shivered when she felt the tingling _other_ presence shoot down her fingertips. Sherman Fine got away.

In a state of shock, Jamie couldn't help but wonder why there weren't more men storming the building, where were the backups? Then she turned back to the mob and realized very quickly that the people were blocking the main way in. Shaking, Jamie got out her notebook and her writing was barely legible, but she would know what it said. She then quickly began counting the number of mercenaries, her mouth silently forming the numbers.

A woman was suddenly and violently thrown to the ground next to her and Jamie instinctively covered her head again and tried to disappear.

Backup had finally arrived.

Peaking out and seeing the sudden influx she began counting the men once more, starting over. Knowing how many could respond to an attack like this, even with a delay, would be very good. She started at the door where Sherman Fine had disappeared, her eyes gradually shifting across the room.

_Seven, eight, nine… twelve, thirteen, fourteen… sixte—_

Jamie froze. Absolutely stunned, her pen dropped from her hand as she stared at him.

_Bane_.

He stood by a pillar directly across from her and she hadn't even noticed until just now. But what scared her more was that he wasn't paying any attention to his men running back and forth, or to the dead they were collecting from Sherman Fine's escape. No, he was looking right at her.

Shit, she thought with a tremor. Oh _shit_.

Her body was frozen. She had no idea what to do. She couldn't make herself move, even though her body felt like it was in one of those dreams where she was falling, falling, falling faster than she could scream. And all that he had done to strike such drowning horror in her was simply look at her.

_This city is ruined_, something small and insistent whispered inside of her head. It is ruined and there is no hope against something like _him_. How could they win? One look and she was vulnerable, bare in front of him.

She had no mask to hide behind, nothing to protect her.

The noise suddenly came back full force and she could hear one of the mercenaries shouting something about Sherman Fine knowing blueprints and the last vestiges of the mob still trying to get out. It was so overwhelming that Jamie shook, just once and she knew that Bane noticed when his head tilted just the slightest. With that one small movement Jamie knew that this staring contest wouldn't last much longer without one of them doing something.

She was going to be the one.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Jamie began to stand up and as she did the force of his gaze was still on her but he did not move. Her knees trembled shaking her already shaken soul. Clutching the notepad in her hand, she forgot about the pen, leaving it behind. Her foot fumbled a little as she felt behind her for solid ground refusing to take her eyes off of Bane. And then she took one step back and another and one to the side before she was behind the pillar and out of his sight.

The relief was so strong that Jamie nearly dropped back down to her knees. But being near the door already and having freedom right there, she stumbled and tripped nearly running face first into another mercenary on her way out. Her breathing was hysterical and she could hear herself make little keening noises.

She was so stupid, so, so stupid. Jamie berated herself as she scrambled down the courthouse's steps, slipping a little before breaking into a full out sprint. How had she not even noticed him come into the courthouse? She had no idea how long he had been there, let alone how long he had been _watching_ her. Jamie was supposed to be able to blend in, that was one thing she could do. But she had been the only person still and quiet, _freaking counting_, in the midst of wild pandemonium. Of course he had noticed her. Anyone would have.

She blew it, Jamie thought. She might have new information, but Bane saw her and she blew it. What did she think she was doing, anyway? And why her? Why, out of all of the people in the world, did she have to be the crazy person who heard the Voice? Why didn't it choose someone better, more qualified?

**_Because you listen._**

"And what would happen if I chose not to?" She asked aloud and then grimaced. Fabulous, now she was officially talking to herself.

There was no answer and as Jamie Delacroix slowed her once desperate run into an exhausted walk, she understood. There was no answer because there was no way that she would choose _not_ to listen. Especially not now. She was a person who was all about setting things into motion because she had been set into motion years ago when she first heard the Voice. From that moment on, everything had changed and all of it had led up to this.

She just hoped she wouldn't get killed in the process.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Next chapter will begin some pretty massive changes to the general plot of this story for those who were readers before... I'm excited for newness!

- Finch


	3. The Burning

**_Living Among Lions_**** by ElizabethFinch**

* * *

><p><em>"Act, and God will act."<em>_  
><em>- Joan of Arc

**Chapter Three: The Burning**

The city was silent, obscenely so.

Void of not just people, but _life_. Gotham looked as though the bomb had already gone off. Sure, all the buildings were still mostly intact, there were no piles of rubble, but the city was well on its way to death. Stores with shattered windows lined the streets accented by the shredded American flags that had been strung along the balconies of second, third, and fourth story apartments. There were tanks constantly roaming, tumblers made of steel, equipped with retractable canons and missile launchers, painted in desert camouflage that were frighteningly similar to the Batman's own vehicle. There were trucks that may or may not be carrying a nuclear bomb and pickup trucks with heavy machine guns in their beds; but there were no people.

At least Jamie never saw one as she made the long walk to St. Swithuns. Maybe after the courtroom catastrophe she was just being more sensitive than normal, but she felt like right now she was the only living soul in a city that was supposed to hold twelve million.

Where were they? How was it possible for twelve million people to hide?

Jamie walked completely lost in her thoughts feeling like she was drowning in the stillness that was Gotham. She had six blocks to get to the boys home and that was probably just what she needed to bring herself back down to earth. Though her hands were still shaking (_would they ever stop?_) from her encounter with Bane, she walked with a purpose.

Of course, she was only this confident because she had just spent the last ten minutes in a back alley screaming her lungs out into her winter coat and biting the material as hard as she possibly could until tears leaked out of her eyes.

But she was good now. Mostly.

Half-way good. She was definitely half-way good.

Jamie had been surprised, honestly, that in the midst of her panic attack she had been able to hear the low beep of her watch telling her to get her butt over to St. Swithuns or else. But she was glad she did, because she needed to be there. And to think, she almost didn't make it to this meeting at all.

_Hell_ that was too close. He was much bigger in person. Just by the look of him, Jamie was sure that he could have crushed not just her neck, but her _spine_ with his bare—

When a tremor hit her, strong, Jamie automatically breathed in and then blew out nice and slow. She knew how to calm herself down. That meant happy thoughts—not thoughts about… _him_.

So Jamie desperately pulled up any thoughts she could about her little-big sister, Jaclyn, anything, anything to distract her from thinking about Bane and the Courthouse. Jaclyn. Jaclyn. Jaclyn who was fourteen now and tougher than Jamie would ever be. She was also taller than Jamie would ever be, already built like an athlete even though she wasn't fully matured. And unlike most younger siblings, Jaclyn didn't gloat in her stellar growing abilities when she surpassed her older sister.

Being older, Jamie felt it was her responsibility to teach her giant baby sister what it meant to laugh from your belly and not just your mouth. But it was a difficult task and Jamie was becoming more and more convinced that Jaclyn had been born seriously lacking a sense of humor. Or if she did have one, it was so dry that Jamie didn't fully understand it. But Jamie loved her to bits and she was positive that if she let her, Jaclyn would be right alongside her for this ride… which might have been a useful thing seeing that Jamie could stand to have some muscle follow her around.

Nope.

Happy thoughts, Jamie chided herself and picked up her pace a little as she got closer. Her legs had stopped shaking now, but her hands seemed determined to keep it up. She also studiously ignored the infinitesimal _tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick_ she could hear in the background of life. It had been in her head, torturing her some nights, since the start of this all and any time she began to doubt what she was doing in these last few weeks, if she was making the right decision, it was there, ticking away like her own personal giant Big Ben.

She didn't exactly think that was a very reassuring noise to hear, but it got the point across.

When Jamie looked up next she felt a smile, a real one albeit very small, flit across her face and her hands shook violently once more. John Blake had come. And he was waiting for her in the exact same spot she had first stood three days ago.

She knew he would come.

Harshly, Jamie stuffed her shaking extremities in the pockets of her coat, because John Blake was a cop and they typically looked for those kinds of things and he might get the wrong idea about her and think she was some druggie going through withdrawals from the tremors that kept wracking through her.

He saw her the moment she came around the corner, the movement catching his attention right away. And just like last time, she smiled at him a little too big and a little too forced and he did not return it. Blake wordlessly nodded his head towards St. Swithuns when she got close enough and motioned for her to follow him. She did, grateful to go inside and out of the cold. And it gave her a little more time to get a _freaking grip_.

Silently they walked up the steps and Jamie was more surprised than she should have been when he opened the door for her. Going inside, she was hit by the heat right away and sighed in relief, immediately closing her eyes and letting it thaw out her face in painful little prickles. Blake wiped his feet on a rug by the door and looked up at her. "Mind wiping your feet? Father Reilly is kind of a freak about that."

Jamie looked down at her boots and saw that she had tracked in a good amount of the wet slushy stuff. Crap. She usually thought about stuff like that.

"Oh, sorry," she apologized absently and followed his example. When her boots were as dry as they could be, Blake led her up the narrow stairway.

Upstairs she found that St. Swithuns no longer served as just a boys home. It was a refugee center. There were families huddled up together, and of course the children outnumbered the adults and they all seemed to be constantly moving all at once. A few of the boys recognized Blake right away and came over to talk, but Jamie hardly heard what they said and he dismissed them pretty quick and nodded a hello to what must have been Father Reilly.

When Blake suddenly grabbed her arm and gave her a funny look as he lead her into another smaller room where they were away from the noise and alone, Jamie realized he must have been trying to talk to her. She shook her head, took another deep breath as yet another tremor—lighter than the others, thank God, rolled through her.

The room he took her to was actually a kitchen. It was sparse; a small counter to the left with a fridge and sink behind it and a simple dining table to the right. Jamie shrugged off her coat feeling like she was moving in slow motion and set it behind a chair she then proceeded to sit in. Blake was standing by the counter staring at her and looking decidedly uncomfortable. Jamie herself wasn't sure what was going on, except that she thought she might be having a really bad panic attack.

A small part of her mind told her to snap out of it and ask him about the map, but her brain wasn't functioning properly at the moment because all she could do was open and close her mouth like a goldfish.

What was _wrong_ with her?

"Would you like something to drink?"

The question surprised her and Jamie jumped. "Yeah, sure. That would be great."

Blake went right away into the kitchen and got an electric kettle and filled it with water. She watched as he concentrated and then set it to boil before quickly moving through the cabinets and pulling out two mugs and a large glass jar filled with white packets with little red writing on them. Blake looked at the packets for a second, glanced back into the cabinet he got them from like he expected something else to magically appear, before he shook his head and grinned. It was the second smile she had ever seen him wear and Jamie absently thought it suited him better than his frowns.

"Looks like Father Reilly still keeps the secret stash in the same not very secret spot. And it looks like he is still against coffee, tea, and anything that someone over fifteen would normally drink," Blake popped off the top of the glass jar and lifted a packet to show Jamie. "You like hot chocolate?"

Jamie stared at him for a long moment, probably too long by most social standards but, hey, she had just been in a major situation about an hour ago. Long stares were okay, for now. Blake waited patiently and she couldn't even begin to think of how to explain to him how wonderful that sounded. Hot chocolate was her go-to comfort drink and just what she needed… and probably something her mom would have made for her. Not a police officer in a boys home/refugee camp.

"That sounds absolutely perfect." She smiled at him and there was a hidden relief in his eyes. He was probably happy she wasn't going catatonic on him.

The kettle made a clicking sound and soon Blake was pouring the water, stirring the drink and then coming over with a steaming cup of hot chocolate. When she noticed that he had put his mug back in the cabinet, despite the water being ready and there being enough packets of instant cocoa, she glanced at him curiously.

"You aren't a chocolate fan?" Jamie was extremely careful to make sure that her hands weren't shaking too violently when she grabbed the cup of cocoa. That could have been a total disaster.

"I drink coffee." He said simply and she made a face at that and took her first sip. It warmed her straight to her belly. Blake was watching and she saw his eyes flicker down to her hands and back to her face almost faster than she could blink.

So he'd noticed.

Blake seemed content to let her get about half way through her cup before they began whatever it was they were here to do. He looked all around the kitchen, at the magnets on the fridge, the grooves of the wood on the table, at everything he could all the while observing her out of the corner of his eye.

"Are you pleased?" Blake gave her a funny look and Jamie continued. "Have you figured me out, yet, Officer?"

"Detective."

She blinked. Oh, she hadn't known that. "Congratulations."

He grinned, but there was no humor in it. "Got promoted because I decided to follow a wild goose chase down into the sewers. Gordon claimed that he had seen a masked man down there, no one believed him."

"But you did." He looked at her and nodded very seriously. Setting her cup down and quickly balling her hand into a fist and placing in under the table, out of sight and on her lap, Jamie leaned forward. "So what do you believe now?"

"I don't know," Blake sighed and rubbed a hand over his face looking suddenly very tired. "You were right about the map, about everything on it. I checked it out myself trying to find some mistake, but there was nothing. The times, the streets, everything was good."

"So what does this mean?" Jamie tapped her feet on the ground and then stopped herself. She didn't want to seem too anxious or twitchy or whatever the heck was wrong with her, even though it was written in every line of her body. She had to play this just right. After what she went through today, there was no way she was ruining this. Plus, Blake thought of her as a kid, she could always tell when people did. It was something dismissive in the way they were about everything you said. Even if what you were saying was right, or important, there was a certain level of skepticism that people held when speaking to children. Whether it was in their voice or their face, it was there on some level. It drove Jamie insane. In her opinion, it should be the other way around. Children were the most truthful people Jamie knew.

"It means nothing." Blake watched her carefully. "Nothing until I know exactly who you are."

Hope fluttered in her chest and Jamie had to take a moment to make sure that her heart didn't jump straight through her mouth the second she opened it. She tapped her feet again and nodded. "Is this going to be an interrogation?"

"Not really," he told her honestly. "But you can think of it like that, if you want."

Jamie grabbed her cup once more and sat back in her chair. She tipped it back and finished it off licking a drop that had escaped out of the side of her mouth. Satisfied and focusing on her happy thoughts, she nodded to him. "Fire away, Detective."

"What's your full name?"

"Jamie Marie Delacroix." She expected Blake to bring out a notepad and start writing everything down, like the cops on television. But he just sat opposite from her and thought for a second.

"Is that French?"

"Mhmm."

"Birthday?"

"December twenty-fourth."

"How old are you?"

"What's your full name?" Blake stared at her not understanding and Jamie grinned. "You can't expect to ask me all of these personal questions and not have to answer any in return."

"I'm not the one who is under investigation right now."

"So this _is_ an interrogation."

He looked slightly put out at this point as he finally conceded. "My name is John Blake, but you already knew that."

"I did… but, I mean, you have… _two_ first names?" Jamie could see the irritation building. Something in her couldn't stop, beside this was making her feel more normal, more like the confident Jamie. Not the sniveling terror-child she had been reduced to. "I don't know which to call you. John… Blake… Detective."

"John or Blake will be fine."

"Sure thing, Detective."

She snickered at the look he gave her and it was real and it made her feel so immensely relieved. Mission accomplished: she was relaxing. She could do this.

"How old are you?" He asked again, this time more firm.

"Nineteen." Blake blinked, she grinned. "Surprised? Most people usually are."

The dark haired man flat out lied as he shook his head, "No."

"How old are _you_?" She quipped, amused, and Blake merely ignored the question getting back to his own.

"What school did you go to?"

"Gotham High." Jamie looked down to her empty mug and traced a circle on the edge of it with her index finger. Of course, at that moment, a tremor decided to come back full force and her hand shook of its own accord. Just once, but her fingernail clanged against the cup loud enough to be heard. Deeply and suddenly embarrassed, Jamie could not bring herself to look up at the man across from her. She tucked her hands back into her lap and went back to her mantra of happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.

"College?"

"Nope," there was a pause and she added quietly. "I never wanted to go. And besides, not going doesn't mean you're not intelligent."

Blake got up at that point and took her mug without asking. He went back over to the electric kettle, checked the water and when he saw that it was still hot he made her a second glass of hot chocolate. Jamie couldn't help but be a little suspicious. Either he knew she was uncomfortable and was trying to hide it, or he was just kind. She wasn't sure which, to be honest. He might have just been reading her body language, considering that probably had to be part of the qualifications of being a detective. She watched him with a small frown as he stirred in the chocolate power and continued to ask questions, this time not looking at her. "What job did you have?"

"I worked in a daycare center," Jamie murmured and when he returned he offered her a small smile before handing her the mug. "I like kids."

"Family?"

A heartbeat of silence. "You mean, are they still alive? Yeah. My mom, Marie Delacroix, and my little-big sister Jaclyn. I moved back in with them since—since everything. It's safer for us to stick together."

"What about you father?"

Jamie pursed her lips and spoke carefully. "I talk to him occasionally, but he's been gone from our home for seven years."

She took a moment to take a sip of her drink and Blake tapped his fingers briefly on the table top. She watched them move in a five beat pattern and her gaze slowly traveled up his arm back to his eyes. He looked serious, his face drawn and she knew instantly that the easy stuff was over.

"How did you know I was working for Commissioner Gordon?"

"I saw you, on that day the stadium was blown up," Jamie started and when Blake's brows shot up in surprise, she added quickly, "Well me and my dad saw you. I don't get together with my dad that often, usually it's for special occasions. That day happened to be his birthday, so it was sort of an obligatory thing. But I think with what happened that day maybe that was a sign that hanging around the old man isn't such a good idea, huh?" A small hollow laugh floated out of her and then shook her head. "Anyway, you took our car, that's how I know you worked with Gordon."

"By the docks?" Blake asked incredulously.

"Yeah, when the sewers were getting blown to hell. You came over, shotgun in hand, and told us you were a cop and told us you needed our car. And, well, things had just blown up and you had a gun, so of course we gave it to you. But the car had a GPS and my dad turned it on right away and we eventually found it at the hospital. There were bodies in the front entrance and when we asked what happened a security guard told us about the stadium, the bomb, and a young cop running through the hospital desperate to save the Commissioner." When she finished Blake looked even more confused than when she began and she felt a little bad for him. "You don't remember me, huh?"

"No, I don't," he shook his head. "Sorry."

"That's okay, you were busy that day." It was the understatement of the year and they both knew it.

"So," Blake motioned toward her with his hand. "How did you know to meet me here?"

"I told you earlier, I watch a lot of things. I can be pretty unnoticeable." Flashes of a crazed mob clawing their way to freedom, a man with a cobalt blue tie, a gun, and the horror of realizing Bane had caught her flew through her mind. She sucked in a deep breath and added hastily, "_Most_ of the time. I can get around unnoticed most of the time."

Blake was nice enough to let her get away with that answer for the moment, but from the calculating look in his eyes she knew it wouldn't last long. "Is that how you knew about the trucks?"

"More or less."

"You're not giving me much to go on here, you know."

Jamie nodded. "I know."

"Who's your source?"

Her eyes snapped up in shock and locked onto the man across from her. When she didn't answer, Blake explained easily, as if he had figured it all out ahead of time. "A nineteen year old girl wouldn't simply know what you know without some kind of a source feeding her this information. You've got someone using you like a puppet. The food drops, the truck routes—"

"The fact that the Commissioner and what's left of the Gotham police force meet regularly in the freezer of Francisco's grocery?" Jamie bristled.

Blake went deathly still.

"_What?_"

"Hmm, I didn't mention that one before?" Even as pissed off as she was, Jamie kept her face carefully blank.

Blake jumped to his feet so fast that he knocked his chair over backwards. His eyes were pure fire as he jabbed a finger in her direction. "How in the hell—listen, I want to know who you've been talking to and I want to know _right now_. No more of this, 'I'm observant' bullshit. This is people's lives at stake; it isn't some fucking game!"

"Don't you think I know that?" Jamie hissed, rising from her chair as well. "What do you think, that I'm some kind of idiot just because I'm not a cop? I know this city is in shambles, I see it every day and yet I'm still here risking my own skin to help you. I'm not some damn _puppet_."

"But you _do_ have someone helping you… don't you?" Blake narrowed his eyes, his voice dropping back down to a normal level and Jamie, caught off guard by the sudden change, blanched.

Her fingers curled into fists until the tendons in her knuckles turned white. Heart pounding in her chest, she could feel it's beat jump throughout her entire body as yet another tremor came over her. This was her chance. A chance to make things right and easy and to come out of the shadows that had been chasing her for years. She tried… she tried so damn hard to just get it over with and _say it,_ but the truth simply refused to come out. Instead, all of the previous fight left her and she sank back down into her chair like a deflated balloon. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Protection."

Blake fell quiet and then he righted his chair and returned to his seat, his voice oddly gentle. "Jamie, you know you can't keep someone with this kind of knowledge safe on your own. And since you're walking around with this kind of information, it puts you in just as much danger, too," he reached forward and covered one of her hands, one that had started shaking again. "You don't have to do this on your own. Let me help."

Oh, but his voice was so promising and the offer was _so_ tempting. Her eyes closed on their own accord as she imagined a world where she could tell this man everything, every last shaming detail, and there would be no consequences. A world where she didn't have to cover up and excuse what she couldn't help. The pull, the tug to just do it was so strong that it made her lean toward him—and then she froze.

Gotham was not a place without consequences.

She had learned that lesson through and through. "I'm sorry. I just… can't." She shrugged, a simple rising of one shoulder. "If it helps, think of me like one of those anonymous tip phone calls."

"It doesn't work like that. Not anymore, not with a nuclear bomb," he told her but she had already made her choice (a coward's choice). Any other option was gone, floating away like the seed of a dandelion. She couldn't magically pull up some deep root of bravery within her because it simply wasn't there. Conviction, a solid knowledge of right and wrong; that there was plenty of. The guts to do something about it; only when desperation and self preservation were shoving at her like they had been for the past month. But the willingness to be vulnerable and to lay herself bare, to shine a light the skeletons in her closet for someone else—someone who she hardly knew to begin with—to see and judge? She had already done that once in her life and she got burned and no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't bring herself to do it again.

"I don't have another choice."

"There's always another choice."

"Not in Gotham."

A pregnant silence echoed between then; weighty and uncomfortable, neither one willing to give the other a single inch. In that silence, Jamie felt the weight of the day settling around her shoulders. She was tired. So tired.

"I told Gordon about you today," Blake said suddenly, shaking her out of her reverie. He was staring hard down at the table, his voice oddly quiet. "I told him I'd find out more about you, if you could be trusted… We want to trust you, but how do you expect me to go to the police Commissioner and tell him that the information I've been provided with came from a girl who refuses to name her source? A source that for all I know might be dangerous and could very easily lead us into a trap?"

"Maybe what you need to do is to think of this like another wild goose chase." Jamie smiled and it was very small.

"That won't last very long with the Commissioner," he met her eyes his time and she saw the same desperation in them that she felt every waking moment since Bane had invaded Gotham. They had both reached the end of their ropes, albeit their ropes were very different but they both had one thing in common: they eventually came to an end and she and Blake were hanging on for dear life. One more inch and they'd fall.

"What if," Jamie bit her lip and she almost couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. "What if I promised to tell you… soon? Just not today."

The dark haired detective watched her for a long, long moment and Jamie forced herself to keep eye contact. Finally, he seemed somewhat satisfied. "Soon. How soon?"

"I don't know." She felt helpless, unable to give him any of the information that he wanted or, in fact, probably needed. She knew that she was giving him shit, to be honest. But courage was a funny, fickle thing and she didn't seem to have any of it to spare today. It was all used up, shriveled like a dried up sponge. "I'm sorry."

Blake nodded, tight lipped, and then he opened his mouth, his expression clear that whatever he was going to ask was incredibly important. "Just answer this one thing: why did you come to me? There had to have been other officers… why me?"

Funny, she had asked that same question of herself only hours ago. Jamie felt her mouth quirk and when she looked up she saw honest curiosity in John Blake's face. "I saw something in you that I recognized." Jamie searched his eyes. "Drive."

* * *

><p>They were walking back down the narrow stairway a few minutes later, both deciding that they had had enough for today. Jamie didn't know what any of this meant for her, she didn't feel particularly encouraged and considering the day as a whole that she had, she just wanted to go home and sleep.<p>

Blake opened the door for her again and when she stepped out into the cold, Jamie was surprised to see that it was just on the verge of dark. They must have spent more time talking than she had originally thought. A small spike of fear went through her as she realized the walk home she would have to make. She wouldn't make it before the sun went down completely. And honestly, Jamie wasn't sure she could take any more incidents happening today. She had enough, thank you very much.

As if reading her thoughts, the man next to her reassured her. "I'll walk you home."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure as hell that you're not walking home this late by yourself."

"Thank you," Jamie said softly and she meant it.

Blake didn't say anything else as they got back down to the street level. He didn't ask how far she lived; she guessed he didn't care from the hard set of his shoulders. Jamie was suddenly glad he was with her, despite the slight awkwardness.

Gotham hadn't changed since they had gone inside St. Swithuns. It was still incredibly silent, in a death-like state.

"I thought this was the city that never slept," Jamie said suddenly, surprising herself and the man next to her. "It looks more like it's the city that will never wake up."

Blake looked around them as she spoke and didn't say anything. He was clearly keeping his thoughts to himself. She pulled her coat tightly around herself and began the long walk, thankful when he fell into step beside her. There wasn't much left to say, and Blake was obviously on the lookout from the way his eyes constantly shifted over the streets. Their footsteps didn't make much noise, but even now, Jamie could hear it.

_Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick._

She wondered if the man next to her could hear it too, the great countdown of their lives. Or maybe this was a lovely sound only reserved for crazy people like her. Jamie shook that thought from her head. She wouldn't tear herself down. She had come to terms with herself a long time ago and she wasn't going back down those old roads.

Their trip was silent, like the city, and when Jamie led them down the last street toward the house she and her mother and sister lived in, she felt an immediate sense of relief. She could go to sleep soon.

"This is my street," she nodded with her chin and Blake studied it. "By the way, I have some more information for you, if you want it." Blake turned and looked at her for the first time on their walk. "The last three days, I've been going into the Courthouse."

Blake stopped walking completely, "You went_ where?_"

"You know, the Courthouse," Jamie kept her voice carefully nonchalant. "The one Doctor Jonathan Crane runs, A.K.A. the Scarecrow. I stood with the jury and got some statistics. I don't think it's really useful, but then again I'm not a cop," she pulled out the tiny notebook and played with it. "Most of it are things like how many mercenaries are there every day, how armed, observations on Crane's patterns, entries and exits, things like that. But today… something happened. That's why I was so shaky earlier. I know you noticed and thank you for not drilling me about that," she looked at him now, her eyes painfully honest. "It scared me and I haven't been that scared in a long time."

"What happened?"

"There was a guy, Sherman Fine, on trial. Crane knew him, they went back and forth and Sherman acted like he had been betrayed, he said he had worked for the Scarecrow. Anyway, he—he pulled a gun, people panicked and ran for the door. But they all got stuck in the masses because the door wasn't big enough for all of them to get out at once. And Sherman got away by running to a room in the back, he found an escape route. I don't know where," she shook her head. "But here's the interesting part. Because the people panicked and blocked the main entryway, the backup was delayed a good five minutes. It was a small hole, a weakness, and the only thing I could find. But it's better than nothing, right?"

The detective did not seem to enjoy her self-deprecating smile. He turned and really looked at her, his eyes searching.

"Jamie," she absently noted that his hands were on her shoulders and she realized she must have drifted off in her own thoughts, exhaustion seeping into her. He bent down just a little to catch her eye, his face completely serious. "Can you tell me any other reason why you're doing this? Because honestly, what you're doing is suicidal. I need to know if there is any other reason."

She thought for a second and when she spoke her breath came out in little white puffs. "Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you're here. That's… it's just an awful feeling. My mom, used to ask me this question when I was a little girl, just to get me to think. 'If there was one thing in this entire world that you could change, what would it be?' What would I be so passionate about that I'd burn for it?"

She paused and looked to the man in front of her. John Blake was handsome and his face looked young and it made her smile. He was so full of fire and she knew then and there that maybe even if she never told him the truth about her, even if he never really understood, just maybe he would understand this.

He had to because it was in him too.

"It took me years to find the answer, but I think I get it now," Jamie continued even more softly. "Sometimes you don't know what you would burn for until you're already on fire. By then, it's too late. You're just… burning."

Jamie left him then, standing there on the street and she walked the rest of the way to her house. When she got to her door and turned back, John Blake was still watching her with an unreadable look on his face. Jamie wasn't sure if she was ever going to see him again, so she smiled as best as she could and went inside wondering if he felt the heat of flames lick at his skin like she did.

* * *

><p>"You look tired."<p>

Adenrele hadn't heard him approach, which always impressed her no matter how many times it happened considering his size. He didn't always do it on purpose like everyone thought either. Bane was the type of person who had to choose to make noise if he wanted to announce his arrival, otherwise he moved as silent as the grave. Life had taught him that and it had taught him well.

He was standing in her doorway and looked as if he were in a particularly cheerful mood. She wasn't sure whether he was waiting for permission to enter her domain or for her to simply acknowledge him but his expectation of something was clear.

"I am tired," she admitted.

Bane took that as his cue and his boots thudded on the ground as he walked in. Intimidation. Adenrele regarded him, judging, weighing what he might say, what might happen; she had been expecting a visit of sorts… just not from Bane. She thought he had made his point.

He walked over to the chair next to her simple makeshift cot, invading her space. There were three other cots in the room, small but suitable for grabbing some quick sleep. She shared the room with some of her sisters, but they each had their own space and none of them trespassed without express permission. Except for Bane.

The metal chair creaked under his weight, but he paid it no mind. "How was your patrol?"

She knew which patrol he was asking about. That night she had gotten back in the early hours of the morning and went straight to bed. She had been hoping that sleep would help, but it hadn't. At least not much. And she hadn't seen Barsad since and wasn't sure when she was going to either, which was odd. It wasn't like him to hide, no matter what he'd done. She'd seen him kill before and she'd killed before. She just didn't enjoy it when it involved kids. Adults, she wouldn't blink before pulling the trigger… but a child—even a teenage one, was harder. For her, at least.

"I am sure you know how my patrol went. It would serve no purpose for me to tell you what you already know." Adenrele didn't look directly at Bane as she spoke. The more time that had passed since that night, the more guilt set in. She had made a scene in front of the others and despite her dislike of the situation and she and Barsad's friendship, it was completely unacceptable. Though she suspected there was something more than chewing her out for disrespecting a commanding officer to this visit.

Bane did everything with a purpose.

The mask hissed and his voice was light and airy. "You have grown quiet over these last months and I merely was concerned." When he spoke he sounded like a worried father. She leveled her gaze on him and she could suddenly see crow's feet appear around the edges of his eyes. Those were happy wrinkles. He was _smiling_ at her. "It is my belief that you needed to be reminded of why you are here. And of what happens to those who betray us."

Somehow she had expected this. The message he sent her was obvious enough. Still, she felt herself get riled up.

"You doubt my loyalty, now—to you_?_"

"Not to me," Bane assured her and reached over to give her a heavy pat on the arm. His hand stayed on her arm longer than necessary. "To the plan. Despite your training, you still fear death and fear is a powerful agent. It can cause sensible people—_loyal_ people to act unreasonable. I was merely securing your place in this new world."

Adenrele felt herself shut down, like the slow powering off a machine that had been running too long. Her way of survival was not to block everyone out, it was to block herself out. If no one could see what she was thinking, then she could think whatever she wanted and not pay for it. It was safety.

And so, yes, she thought this plan was madness. But to betray the plan would be to betray Bane; they were nearly the same entity. And if she did betray them, that would have been an even greater form of madness and not one that she planned to take part in. She might hate him at times—as they all did, but she loved him as well. The two feelings intermingled as they often did. He saved her. He was cruelty and kindness, he was danger and safety. He was both and more. Adenrele had never known someone who would provide the kind of protection that Bane did. Because he taught her how to protect herself and that was invaluable. She owed him her life.

Maybe he needed the reminding.

"My place was secured the moment you took me out of Freetown. We both know that I would have been dead the following morning if you hadn't. I said yes to your offer with the full understanding of what my acceptance meant. I do not regret my choice. I am loyal, Bane."

There was a heartbeat of silence between the two of them.

"That was many years ago."

"Yes. But I haven't forgotten." _I dream about it nearly every night_.

"People can change."

She felt iron settle in her tone. "I don't."

"No, you haven't." Bane chuckled and looked somewhat pleased. She didn't feel so relieved though. He dropped his grip on her arm and stood up suddenly. He turned towards the door making sure the sound of his steps could be heard. She watched him go, but before he left he twisted around one last time. "Don't let your fear get the best of you, Adenrele. You are above it." She nodded, closing herself down further. The crow's feet suddenly appeared again and he was smiling once more. "And the next time you cause me to question your loyalties—whatever the reason; I will skip the lesson and strangle you myself."


End file.
